e, a quarter-master, was drowned; the other was
thrown ashore by the surf, with his head buried in the sand, but by the
immediate assistance of the people on shore, was saved. As for us in the
barge, we expected the same fate every moment, for the sea broke a long way
without us. However, we got her head to it, and hove up our grapnel, or
should rather say kellick, which we had made to serve in the room of our
grapnel, hove overboard some time before to lighten the boat. By this means
we used our utmost efforts to pull her without the breakers some way, and
then let go our kellick again. Here we lay all the next day in a great sea,
not knowing what would be our fate. To add to our mortification, we could
see our companions in tolerable plight ashore, eating seal, while we were
starving with hunger and cold. For this month past we had not known what it
was to have a dry thread about us.

The next day being something more moderate, we ventured in with the barge
as near as we could to the shore, and our companions threw us some seals
liver, which having eat greedily, we were seized with excessive sickness,
which affected us so much that our skin peeled off from, head to foot.

Whilst the people were on shore here, Mr Hamilton met with a large seal or
sea-lion, and fired a brace of balls into him, upon which the animal turned
upon him open-mouthed; but presently fixing his bayonet, he thrust it down
its throat, with, a good part of the barrel of the gun, which the creature
bit in two seemingly with as much ease as if it had been a twig.
Notwithstanding the wounds it received, it eluded all farther efforts to
kill it, and got clear off.

I call this animal a large seal or sea-lion, because it resembles a seal in
many particulars; but then it exceeds it so much in size, as to be
sufficiently determined, by that distinction only, to be of another
species. Mr Walter, in Lord Anson's voyage, has given a particular
description of those which are seen about Juan Fernandes; but they have in
other climates different appearances as well as different qualities, as we
had occasion to observe in this and a late voyage I made. However, as so
much already has been said of the sea-lion, I shall only mention two
peculiarities, one relative to its appearance, and the other to its
properties of action, which distinguish it from those described by him.
Those I saw were without that snout or trunk hanging below the end of the
upper jaw; but th